The Historical Evolution of the Discourse on Mass Media in Political Science

Political science, which has a unique methodological and rich empirical apparatus, has been formed without exaggeration for centuries, centuries. The periodization of the development of political science covers several historical milestones at once: Antiquity, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the modern period. At each stage, positive knowledge was accumulated, systematized, and acquired the outlines of an autonomous theoretical science, which now has applied significance. Such thinkers and scientists as Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, Socrates, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Nicolo Machiavelli, John Milton, John Mill, Thomas More, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, etc. made an invaluable contribution to the formation and development of political science. The institutionalization of political science or political institutionalization itself is inextricably linked with the description and justification of the effectiveness and stability of political processes that take place in various political systems. Within the framework of structural and functional analysis, the key component of any political system is the mass media. Of course, in the usual sense, traditional media were formed and developed much later than the first thoughts about the state, its structure, the categories of freedom, justice, and separation of powers arose, but the conceptual and explanatory base that exists today was not formed immediately. Moreover, the theoretical, methodological, and empirical foundations of the study of mass media require a multi-paradigm approach. The purpose of this work is a theoretical and methodological interpretation of universal and general categories that correspond to the stated topic of this study, and are reflected at the theoretical and empirical levels of political science.